Jayant Narlikar

Jayant Vishnu Narlikar ( born July 19, 1938 in Kolhapur ) is an Indian astrophysicist.

Narlikar is the son of a mathematics professor at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. He studied at the Banaras Hindu University ( Bachelor's degree 1957) and at the University of Cambridge, where in 1960 he took his bachelor's degree in mathematics, Wrangler was, winning the Tyson Medal at the Tripos examinations and the 1962 Smith Prize won. In 1963 he received his doctorate in Cambridge with Fred Hoyle and 1964 he received his master's degree in astronomy and astrophysics. From 1966 he was a member of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge, where he was from 1963 to 1972 Fellow of King's College immediately after its creation. He became a professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay in 1972 and headed the group for theoretical astrophysics. In 1988, he was the founding director of the Indian Inter- University- Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics ( IUCAA ) in Pune.

Narlikar is like Hoyle representatives of alternatives to Bigbang theory in cosmology, such as the steady-state theory. He was also involved in action at a distance theories according to Richard Feynman and John Archibald Wheeler (especially in connection with the arrow of time in cosmology ), with the Mach's principle as well as with tachyons. With Hoyle he developed in the 1960s, a conformal extension of the general theory of relativity, in which the Mach principle is built: the masses of the particles are determined by the masses of all other particles in the universe by an action at a distance theory determined ( Hoyle - Narlikar theory ). The theory is a scalar - tensor theory of gravitation and leads to a time -varying gravitational constant. Still in 1993, he worked with Hoyle and Geoffrey Burbidge on an extension of the steady-state theory.

1994 to 1997 he was President of the Cosmology Commission of the International Astronomical Union. For his popular scientific contributions, he received the 1996 Kalinga Prize by UNESCO. He received the 1990 Indira Gandhi Award of the Indian National Science Academy, 2004 Padma Vibhushan the Order, the Order Padma Bhushan in 1965, the Bhatnagar Award, the MP Birla Award and the Prix Janssen of the French Astronomical Society. In 1967 he was awarded the Adams Prize at Cambridge. He is a Fellow of all three national Indian Academies of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences and a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1976, he received a Sc.D. the University of Cambridge.

He is married to a mathematician and has three daughters.

Writings

  • With Ajit Kembhavi: Quasars and active galactic nuclei - an introduction, Cambridge University Press 1999
  • Violent phenomena in the universe, Oxford University Press 1982
  • Lectures on General Relativity and Cosmology, Macmillan 1979
  • Introduction to Cosmology, Cambridge University Press 1983, 1993, 2002
  • The lighter side of gravity, Freeman 1982, 1996
  • The seven wonders of the universe, Roger and Bernhard 2001 ( English original: Seven wonders of the cosmos, Cambridge University Press 1999)
  • From black holes to black clouds, World Scientific, 1985, 1995
  • Thanu Padmanabhan with: Gravity, Gauge Theories and Quantum Gravity, Reidel, Kluwer 1986
  • Primeval Universe, Oxford University Press 1988
  • The Structure of the Universe, Oxford University Press 1977
  • Cosmic adventure, Pune 2000
  • The scientific Edge: the Indian Scientist from Vedic to modern times, New Delhi, Penguin 2003
  • With Fred Hoyle: The physics astronomy frontier, Freeman 1980
  • With Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge: A different approach to cosmology, Cambridge University Press 2000
  • With Geoffrey Burbidge: Facts and Speculation in Cosmology, Cambridge University Press 2008
  • An introduction to relativity, Cambridge University Press 2010

Narlikar also published several science fiction books.

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